Do you think you know LM Montgomery from reading her children's books? Nope! This book is fascinating for so many reasons but perhaps what appealed to me the most was the discussion of how Maud manipulated her journal for publication. ( )

Do you think you know LM Montgomery from reading her children's books? Nope! This book is fascinating for so many reasons but perhaps what appealed to me the most was the discussion of how Maud manipulated her journal for publication. ( )

Read the Journals first. The authors did a very smart thing, they interviewed many of the people who knew LMM before the journals were published, before people had a chance to read LMM's point of view. I had always wondered what really happened because LMM fairly enough is writing from her point of view and with the knowledge and intention that her journals would be published. She lied, to herself mostly, could she possibly have been that naive about Chester. And she was brutally honest.

Her journals are the only example of journals I have ever read that I think harmed the writer. She created a picture of herself and then lived up to it. ( )

Wikipedia in English (1)

Mary Henley Rubio has spent over two decades researching Montgomery’s life, and has put together a comprehensive and penetrating picture of this Canadian literary icon, all set in rich social context. Extensive interviews with people who knew Montgomery – her son, maids, friends, relatives, all now deceased – are only part of the material gathered in a journey to understand Montgomery that took Rubio to Poland and the highlands of Scotland.

From Montgomery’s apparently idyllic childhood in Prince Edward Island to her passion-filled adolescence and young adulthood, to her legal fights as world-famous author, to her shattering experiences with motherhood and as wife to a deeply troubled man, this fascinating, intimate narrative of her life will engage and delight.